


Read You Like A Book

by auroreanrave



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Books, Bookstores, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Ficlet, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-12 11:24:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17466659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: Dan and Blair and a bookstore in Brooklyn.





	Read You Like A Book

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! It's that time again for my annual 'write something for my birthday' little event, so here's something born of a bunch of different ideas that eventually coalesced into 'what if instead of Penn Badgley playing a psycho bookstore clerk in YOU, it was just Dan Humphrey' and then my love of books emerged a little and produced this. I hope you enjoy this!

 

She's the most infuriating customer he's ever met.

The bookshop role is part-time, easy enough for Dan to balance with his attempts at writing the next Great American Novel. Or at least the next Moderately Good Decently Reviewed Book.

She arrives in a flurry of snow, brushing it from her beret and taking the only spot in front of the shop's fireplace to deposit her bags and damp coat. "Excuse me," she asks, her smile like a shark's, "can you point in the vague direction of your most edifying literature? Presuming you do have it here."

Dan blinks, lost for a second before he vaguely points towards the classics and more obscure tomes in the back. "All yours."

She nods. "Watch my stuff, it's worth more than this entire borough," she adds as she slinks off into the stacks.

The customer - Blair Cornelia Waldorf, he reads from her credit card when she buys a stack of books and demand he uses plain bags, not the branded ones - is a five-foot pint of snobby nightmare in a ballet flat and Dan thinks about her for the next two days.

 

* * *

 

 

Blair is back the next week, tossing her coat and bag down again.

"Early twentieth-century horror?" she asks. Dan looks at her, midway through sorting new stock with a collection of sticky notes in neon colours.

"To your left and then the four top shelves."

Blair ducks into the section while Dan finishes up, and reemerges. "I can't reach them. Assistance?"

He spends the next ten minutes dutifully removing each book and handing it over to Blair for inspection, upon which she rejects most and insults all. "How can you call this a horror section? I've read scarier Teen Vogue articles."

"You're more than welcome to berate the section yourself," Dan offers, "and I can leave and tend to the books you haven't mauled yet, or you can maybe let me know if there's something specific you're after and I can help."

Blair studies him for a second, Dan regretting his clipped tone before she smirks back. "It's for my Contemporary Lit course. We're going through a couple of books a week on different tones and I wanted something different. Everyone's doing Stephen King and I refuse to kowtow to the herd."

"Nothing wrong with King, but I understand. So early twentieth century... anything you'd enjoy more? Visceral horror, psychological, monsters...?"

Blair leans against the shelf and checks her nails - an immaculate French manicure painted in forest green - and looks up at him, checks his nametag. "Surprise me, Daniel."

Dan picks three books for Blair - Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Bloch, and HP Lovecraft. She assesses them and hands over her card. "I'll let you know what I think."

"Oh, I'm sure you will," he says. Blair watches him pack up her books into the plain bags. "Ashamed of shopping here?" he asks.

"Of course," Blair says, "I'm in Brooklyn."

 

* * *

 

 

She comes the week after and demands his opinions on Faulkner and Salinger who are her next authors and Dan gives her more books and they trade barbs like an old married couple.

He begins picking up details about her, from her immaculate sense of style to the way she never tots up the totals in her head when purchasing books. Dan thinks about her neat swish of shoulder-length hair and glint-bright gaze when she's arguing with him about the thriller genre or the poetry of James Baldwin.

She always steals the seat in front of the fire, even when it's not freezing outside, which admittedly, given that it's rapidly approaching Thanksgiving, is not often.

"There are plenty of bookstores in Manhattan, princess," he jabs when Blair takes a pause in her tirade against the bookshop's collection of Garcia Marquez. "Feel free to head there."

"I don't need people in Manhattan knowing I actually give a crap about this stuff," Blair says. Her voice flecks with sadness for a moment. "They wouldn't understand."

Then, as if acknowledging that she's exposed a flaw, she scoops up her bag and coat and hurries out of the bookshop into the cold New York evening.

 

* * *

 

 

Blair walks in two weeks later, wrapped in a ridiculously oversized turquoise coat that Jenny squeaks is something from a Tom Ford line from next year as she disappears out the door, back to the warmth and coziness of the loft.

"Waldorf," Dan says as greeting.

"Galley boy," admonishes Blair. "How's the novel coming?"

Dan freezes. "How did you - ?"

"Please. That 'Lonely Boy' blog isn't hiding anything. So," Blair says, curling in the chair, her coat discarded, "bring me some Ferrante and tell me about this tome of yours."

"Never in a lifetime and I will be right back," Dan says, his cheeks burning.

He stretches it out for as long as he can, at least twenty minutes after the last customer has left and the only sound is of the rain lashing the windows. When he appears, three books in his hands, Blair is on her phone, patiently waiting.

"It's... God, it's the story of a girl who finds herself in a world of ghosts."

Blair listens, chin braced on the palm of her hand. "And yet you haven't written a word since... August? Five months, Humphrey. That's not writer's block, that's an avalanche."

"It's private, is what it is." Dan hands Blair her stack of books and disappears back into the shelves.

Blair, being Blair Cordelia Waldorf, follows him.

"It's not my fault if you're stuck. I'm sure other aspiring writers go through the same thing."

"I'm sure they do. If you're done berating my personal life..."

"Commenting. Pushing you to do better."

"Why do you care?" asks Dan, turning to face Blair. She's framed by books of Impressionist artists, their bright colours contrasting to the porcelain skin and hazelnut-dark hair.

"I don't. I just..." Blair says, Her hands raise in an aborted movement like she's going to pound her fists against Dan's chest or pull him closer. Dan steps in a little as the air between them rises electric.

"You prefer Ted Hughes over Sylvia Plath," she retorts in lieu of another sentence.

Dan smirks. "Says the woman who's never read Harry Potter. No soul, Waldorf."

"You love Fitzgerald. Daniel, really?"

"He's a key figure of the Twenties."

"Please. Fitzgerald was a drunken hack and you know it."

"You are utterly infuriating," Dan barks and Blair grins.

"What? Because someone else is challenging your lofty literary ideals, Humphrey?"

"No, because you're an insufferable know-it-all who can't accept someone else's opinion."

"Me think he doth protest too much."

"Me think - "

Blair silences him by pulling him down with his hair and into a slam of a kiss that sets his world right.

They break apart minutes later, Blair's lipstick smeared across her lips and Dan aching for more.

"You gonna finish what you start for once, Daniel?" Blair says, her hands curling and impatient, her eyes glowing like embers.

Dan beams into it, kisses her against the stacks, feels her smirk against his lips as he whispers. "As you wish."

 

* * *

 

 

Blair buys Dan a copy of "Writing For Dummies" for their three-month anniversary.

Dan buys Blair a copy of Stephen King's finest works.

They've never been happier.

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the book opinions are just for fun. I imagine the pair of them just say stuff to get a reaction out of the other anyway. Xoxo.


End file.
